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September 2009

September 30, 2009

Unfortunately, rejection is part of the game for every
writer or free-lancer. Knowing that doesn’t always make it easier, though. One
way to turn it into something that has a positive element is to follow these
steps:

1: Take some time to lick your wounds. There’s no getting
away from the fact that being rejected can be depressing or painful.
Acknowledge that and allow yourself a day or two to experience those feelings.
Putting a limit on the time that you’ll spend on this phase tends to make it
pass more quickly.

2: Consider what, if anything, can be learned from the
experience. Ideally the person doing the rejecting will have given you some
feedback, but especially with publishers that’s not always so. But replay what
you did and brainstorm whether you could have done anything differently or what
changes might be worth making before you submit the work somewhere else.

3: Don’t take it personally. I know this is difficult but
much of the time it’s just a mis-match. To give you an example, a few years ago
I was casting actors for a short film. The two main roles were a grandfather
and his grandson. We cast the grandfather first, so whoever we chose for the
other role had to look like he could plausibly be his grandson. That meant
rejecting some fine actors who just didn’t have the right look for that part.
If your manuscript is rejected, it may simply be that the publisher already has
something similar in the works. Or his or her taste may just not be similar to
yours.

4: Get back on the horse as soon as possible. If submitting
a manuscript, get it out to the next place on your list. Consider the whole
thing a game of hide-and-seek. Somewhere out there is the person or the company
that will appreciate your work and be eager to have it. Your job is to weed out
the people who don’t. Mixing metaphors, you may have to kiss a bunch of frogs
before you find the Prince!

(More advice about the psychological side of writing is
found in my book, “Your Writing Coach,” published by Nicholas Brealey and
available from Amazon and other online and offline retailers.)

September 29, 2009

I received an email the other day from someone who wants to write and keeps resolving that tomorrow will be the day they start, but so far it hasn't happened. I suspect the problem is the fear of the blank page--some people put so much pressure on themselves that what they write, even in a first draft, must be really good and that keeps them from going forward. Here is the advice I gave--maybe it will be useful for you as well:

I'd suggest that you decide on a project you might want to write, but
instead of making starting such a big thing, just take a few minutes
each day to brainstorm any aspect of the project and jot down your
ideas (don't judge them at this stage, just write down everything and
put the notes into a box or folder).

For instance, if you want to write
a novel , you could brainstorm who your protagonist might be and what
he or she is like. From there you might have decided who some of the
other characters might be, and do the same for them. You might have an
idea for how it starts, or maybe just for something that might happen
in the middle. Again, jot them down and put them away. Even ten or
fifteen minutes a day on this is fine.

After a while, I think you'll feel that you have a lot of material and
then you can sift through it and see what fits together. Based on that,
you might feel ready to write the opening, or maybe a scene from the
middle or the end. Just write those without being too worried about
whether they'll end up in the final version.

I suspect that when you are at that stage, you'll feel more and more motivated, and writing will come much more easily.

(for more help with your writing, get my book, "Your Writing Coach," published by Nicholas Brealey, and available from Amazon and other online and offline retailers. You can find out more about it at www.yourwritingcoach.com.)

September 28, 2009

The great Italian director, Federico Fellini, had many offers to work in Hollywood. Here's what he said about why he didn't do it:

"What good is giving up my independence, my friends, my Roman restaurants, my crazy Italian people, traffic at rush hour by the Coliseum? I would have made money and lost my joy of life. And that's all filming has been about for me: joy of life, battle of life, comedy of life, fascination of life. Life! Life! Life!"

(If being creative is part of your enjoyment of life, subscribe to my free monthly Brainstorm creativity & productivity e-bulletin. Just send an email request to [email protected])

September 27, 2009

In other posts on this topic we’ve looked at how to change from
the state of creating to the state of critiquing, how to look at the big
picture, and how to improve dialogue.

This time I want to offer a few tips
for doing something you’ve heard before, namely “show, don’t tell.”To some extent, this overlaps with
improving dialogue, because sometimes you can describe an action that
eliminates the need for some dialogue.

Here are some elements to look for:

A character’s emotional state. Rather than telling us that
Bill is angry, describe his body language or let his dialogue reflect (but not
spell out) his mood.

A character’s actions. Instead of using adverbs like “cheerfully,”
“forcefully,” or “eagerly,” describe actions that are inherently forceful or
eager or cheerful. A simile or a metaphor often is more powerful than a
descriptive word by itself.

The mood of a place. If the setting is scary or depressing
or old-fashioned, describe what makes it so.

The goal of showing instead of telling is that when you do
it well, the reader or viewer feels much more involved. They are the ones who
put the clues together and realize that the setting is scary or that the
character is angry.

More rewriting tips coming up soon.

(For equally useful tips on how to write your novel, script,
non-fiction book, articles or other projects, get my book, “Your Writing Coach,”
published by Nicholas Brealey and available on Amazon and other online and
offline retailers. Also see my site, www.jurgenwolff.com
for news about my new 60-day Writing Breakthrough coaching program.]

September 26, 2009

In previous posts on the rewriting process, we looked at how
to get into the best physical and mental state and how to start with the big
picture. When you’ve followed those two steps, you should have a list of any
major changes you want to make.

First, return to your creative state and make those changes.
Write the new opening, flesh out the weak characters, plant the information
that will make the ending make sense, etc.

Those are all the big components of the story. When those
are in good shape, you can start to look at the smaller elements that make up
your novel or screenplay. One important step is fine-tuning your characters by
taking a closer look at their dialogue. Each character should sound unique.
Some of the things that make each character sound different from the others
are:

Jargon related to their careers;

Their vocabulary—often this is related to their level of
education;

How articulate they are;

How they speak to people above and below them in terms of
social status;

Whether their dialogue reflects a sense of humor. And, if
so, what kind? Bawdy? Witty? Sly?;

Whether they have accents or dialects. (Warning: if a
character has a strong accent or dialect; don’t write all of their dialogue
phonetically to reflect this, because it’s very hard to read. Only give a
slight indication of it and, if necessary, refer to it in the character
description the first time we meet the person.)

Another thing to look for is exposition that doesn’t
reflect the way that people really speak. For instance, brothers wouldn’t really
say, “Hal, as my brother you should be standing by me, not fighting me.” It’s
clunky. Also try to avoid that old chestnut, “How long have we known each
other? Twenty years?” One way around this is to introduce a character who
wouldn’t know the information but has a legitimate reason for being interested.

More rewriting tips coming soon--and also see my book, "Your Writing Coach," published by Nicholas Brealey and available at Amazon and other online and offline retailers.

September 25, 2009

In the previous post I suggested that when you’re ready to
critique your own writing, first you should change your state. Now let’s look
at the first step of the actual process:

Start by reading the entire work. Don’t make any marks on
the paper even if you spot typos or other things you want to change. Instead,
try to get a feel for the whole thing and at the end jot down your
thoughts.Here are some of the big
points you might address:

Do you start with something that immediately makes the
reader curious about what’s going on?

Does the story flow or did you notice points at which it was
too slow, too fast, or confusing? If so, indicate where those were.

Are there story strands you started but never finished? List
or describe them.

Are there characters who seem one-dimensional? Specify which
ones.

Are the relationships interesting enough? If not, write down
which ones are lacking.

Does the ending flow logically from what has gone
before—without being totally predictable? If not, jot down the problem.

It’s tempting to jump right in and indicate small changes at
this stage, but if it turns out, for example, that you’re going to replace the
entire opening, it’s a waste of time to correct the one that’s there now. Also,
focusing on the small stuff may distract you from the big things that need to
change.

Equally important, at this stage don’t change anything!
Otherwise you will get back into the creative state and lose your objectivity.
At this point, you’re still just writing down what needs to change, not yet how
to change it.

In the next post we’ll look at the next step
of rewriting.

(There's lots more advice in my book, "Your Writing Coach," published by Nicholas Brealey and available on Amazon and other online and offline retailers.)

September 24, 2009

I’ve had several requests for some tips on how to approach
rewriting your work. As we all know, it’s a lot easier to see the flaws in
someone else’s writing than in our own, so here are some strategies that can help.

The first step is to change your state. Have you ever heard
the Einstein quote: “We cannot solve a problem at the same level at which it
was created”? That applies to rewriting as well.

When you write, you are in a creative state. That’s
different from the state you need to be in to critique your own work. In order
to get into the critiquing state:

Print out the material in a different typeface or on
different color paper.

Reread your writing in a different location. If you write at
your desk, move to the living room or the kitchen or to a café to reread and
evaluate your work.

Use a different posture. Sitting back in a chair feels more
connected to critiquing than sitting at a table.

Pretend that what you are critiquing is not yours, but a
colleagues work that he or she has asked you to critique

In the next post in this series, we’ll look at the actual
critiquing process and how to make it as effective as possible.

September 23, 2009

I’ve posted
several quotes from an interview I did with comedy writer Larry Gelbart, who
passed away recently at the age of 81, and here’s a bit more from him—this time from an
interview conducted by Mike Sacks last year:

Any advice you'd care to
give to those writers out there just beginning their careers?

"When
you're writing and come to a rough spot and the ideas just aren't flowing, put
down dummy text and keep on moving—especially if it's at the end of the day and
you're going to stop. Your brain will never stop for the day, even if you have
stopped working, and there's a very good chance you'll come up with something
better. Also, at the very least, you'll have something to come back to the next
day, instead of a blank page. That's important.

But
in general terms, just sit your ass down in a chair and hope your head gets the
message. Isaac Bashevis Singer's advice for the struggling young writer was to
stop struggling and write. As for me, I don't have any other advice. If I did,
I would have had a far more trouble-free life and a much, much better career."

In that
interview, Gelbart also has a few choice words to say about Dustin Hoffman
regarding the film Tootsie:

“Tootsie is my vision, despite Dustin Hoffman's lifelong mission to deprive anybody of
any credit connected with that movie, except for his close friend, the writer
and producer Murray Schisgal. I say that because Dustin appeared with James
Lipton on Inside the Actors Studio in 2006 and declared that the Tootsie idea sprang from Schisgal's
intestines. I don't know much about gastroenterology, but I do know that the
central theme for Tootsie came from
me. And the central theme was that Dustin's character, Michael Dorsey, would
become a better man for having been a woman. That was the cornerstone of the
film. All of the other details are just floating around that idea.”

(Want to write your own script, novel, or nonfiction book? For guidance, get a writing coach in a book: "Your Writing Coach," published by Nicholas Brealey and available at Amazon and other online and offline retailers)

September 22, 2009

In my interview with the late Larry Gelbart, the writer of
the film “Oh God,” the play “Something Funny Happened on the Way to the Forum”
and the TV series “M*A*S*H,” among many others, I asked him about comedy
writing. Here’s what he said:

“I think the only thing I learned about being consciously
funny was on M*A*S*H. There it was possible every week to examine a specimen,
so to speak. It wasn’t something where you went away and had to wait sixteen or
eighteen months before you saw another one, as was the case with features. I
saw that in the editing process we were losing a lot of stuff that I thought
was funny. We had to, for time reasons, technical reasons, performance reasons,
or even writing reasons.

"What I began to realize was that the only thing that never
went away was exposition. And so, in almost the only conscious rule I’ve ever
given myself, I’ve made a point thereafter to make the exposition entertaining.
Not necessarily funny—if it can be funny, fine; if it doesn’t want to be funny,
don’t try to force it. But those parts of your script that are essential for
your story to be told had better be terrific. A large percentage of the other
material is expendable.”

This applies to novels, too, of course and even
non-fiction.I asked him how you
do it:

“One thing you can do is give your character an amusing
piece of business to do, if what he’s saying sounds like the reading of the
rules of the Academy Awards. If it’s so technical, you hide the nuts and bolts.
But other than that, just break your head to say it in a way that’s diverting,
so that you’re coating the medicine.”

(for unique right-brain methods for making your writing come
alive, see “Your Writing Coach,” published by Nicholas Brealey and available at
Amazon and other online and offline retailers.)

September 21, 2009

When I lived in Hollywood I started a modest publication called The Hollywood Scriptwriter, in which I interviewed successful writers, agents, producers, and network and studio executives. One of the nicest people I met along the way was Larry Gelbart, who passed away recently. He co-wrote one of the best comedy films ever, "Tootsie," as well as one of the best TV series ever, "M*A*S*H."

I interviewed him at his home. He said, "I've got a little office above the garage, let's talk there." So we went from his Beverly Hills mansion out past his pool and tennis court to a very large garage (I think it held four or five cars) and upstairs to a home office that was larger than the entire apartment I was living in at the time. And with warmth and generosity he shared advice about screenwriting. I'll post a few of his observations over the next few days.

Here's one of his thoughts about structure: "I know when you're in trouble at the end, it's because you were in trouble at the beginning. There's no point in writing the end over and over again; you have to go back and see how well you've given yourself the opportunity to finish successfully. That's why the theater is really the most marvelous place for a writer, because the vacuum is gone. You know from night to night, in rehearsals and try-outs, where you're making it and where you're not."

RIP, Mr Gelbart.

(My interview with Larry Gelbart appears in "Successful Scriptwriting," which I co-wrote with Kerry Cox. It's now out of print but you can find used copies on the internet pretty easily.)

September 20, 2009

Keeping an eye on what is happening to newspapers and
magazines is important even for writers who don’t write for those media. In
strategy+business, Matthew Ego, Harry Hawkes and Greg Springs have written a
long article called “Reinventing Print Media.” They discuss the decline of the
print media and say “the situation seems dire and unsolvable.”

However, they also suggest four promising strategies. I’ve
summarized them below along with some of my thoughts about what this could mean
to book authors as well.

1: Develop deeper relationships with readers around targeted
interest areas and use digital media to deepen and extend those relationships.

For book authors this means that we need to be our own brand—beyond
any one book title. If we build a relationship with readers in our niche, they
are more likely to be loyal. We can use the internet to find these people and
give them online content that keeps them connected to us.

3: Lower costs and emphasize a ‘profitable core’ of unique
and brand-defining material.

Print on demand gives authors a low-cost (sometimes no-cost)
way to get their books out, and of course we also have downloadable the e-book
option, again with almost no costs. But again the emphasis is on coming up with
related products that will interest your niche audience.

4: Innovate with new products and pricing models.

If authors have control over their material, they have the
option of repurposing it in a number of different ways. For instance, it would
be possible to put each chapter of a non-fiction book online and give readers
the option of choosing which ones they want to read (and pay for). Or you can
offer a video companion for your book, downloadable for an extra fee.

Suggestion: once a month or so, set aside an hour or two to
think about where things are going in your field and how you can stay ahead of
the curve.

(For great information on writing for publication, see my book, "Your Writing Coach," published by Nicholas Brealey and available from Amazon and other online and offline retailers.)

The
thing I like is that most of the links are to substantial articles, not just
quickie summaries. But web surfers beware: you check this out at your risk—you may
find an hour or two disappear!

(information is great, but how do you turn it into exciting books, plays, screenplays? For help in going from idea all the way through to publication, see my book, "Your Writing Coach," published by Nicholas Brealey and available from Amazon and other online and offline retailers.)

September 18, 2009

I see more and more people advertising products that promise that if you buy them you'll be able to write a book or a screenplay in two or three weeks.

Can you really do this?

Sure.

Will it be any good?

Unlikely.

After more than 20 years of writing scripts, it still takes me at least a month to write a feature film script and that's when I've outlined the story completely, and I prefer to have six to eight weeks. What happens when you take your time is that your subconscious mind works on your behalf as well. Suddenly ideas pop up about the characters and about the plot because you're living with those every day over an extended period. The script or book is richer for it.

It's similar to all those "overnight success" stories in any field. If you look carefully you'll usually discover that it took a long time of working and preparing before that success flowered. Malcolm Gladwell reports in his book, "Outliers" that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to master a skill. Writing is no different. It only looks easy. In fact, the better the writer, the easier he or she makes it look.

If you're tempted by those products think carefully: do you want to write a crappy book or script fast, or a good one more slowly?(for tips on getting started writing your book or script, see "Your Writing Coach," published by Nicholas Brealey and available from Amazon and other online and offline retailers.)

September 17, 2009

If you have been considering using video to promote a book or other creative project, have a look at this 30-second promo for Dr. Laurie Ann Levin’s New Book, “God, The Universe and
Where I Fit In.” It was created by a Disney animator so it looks quite slick
but actually the same thing could have been done with stick figures and still
been interesting.

September 16, 2009

In the New York Times there’s an article by Ben Sisario
about how cartoon artist Dan Perkins was told by Village Voice Media that they
were dropping his “This Modern World” strip—which meant he lost 12 papers in
that chain and a lot of income.

He knew the lead singer of Pearl Jam and asked
whether they might want him to design a poster for them, to help him out a bit.

The article says “To listen to Pearl Jam describe the
collaboration, they were the star-struck ones” and they engaged him to design
their next album cover. He’s also created concert posters for them and the
cover of the October issue of Spin magazine, which features Pearl Jam. The
article quotes lead singer Eddie Vedder: “He’s part of the family now.”

I think there are a few lessons in this story:

·If you don’t ask, you don’t get

·You never know who may already be a fan

·One good thing often leads to another

These may sound trite when stated so baldly, but I know from
my own experience how hard it can be to act on them. It’s risky to ask for
work—they may say no. And unless you have a strong attitude going in, a rejection
like that can be painful. But if you reframe it to think of it as offering an
opportunity that will benefit the other party as much as you, it becomes a lot
easier. If they say no, it’s because they’ve failed to recognize the
opportunity. That’s a failure on their part, not yours. And it’s time to look
for someone who will recognize it.

(for more inspiration and tips and techniques for being more creative and productive, sign up now for my free monthly Brainstorm e-bulletin. Just send an email request to [email protected])